There are several areas to be careful about when doing web searching in any foreign language. Following are some ideas to help anyone searching the web using the Portuguese language or Portuguese resources.
Accents and special characters
Use these if you will be typing accents infrequently, or you do not wish to change your keyboard:
 |
On the Web: Engage number lock. Hold down alt and type the numbers
using the number pad only. When you release alt the accented letter appears.
|
| Acento agudo | ||
|---|---|---|
| alt + | 0224, 0193 = | á, Á |
| alt + | 0233, 0201 = | é, É |
| alt + | 0237, 0205 = | í, Í |
| alt + | 0243, 0211 = | ó, Ó |
| alt + | 0250, 0218 = | ú, Ú |
| Acento grave | ||
| alt + | 0224, 0192 = | à, À |
| alt + | 0242, 0210 = | ò, Ò |
| Acento circunflexo | ||
| alt + | 0226, 0194 = | â, Â |
| alt + | 0234, 0202 = | ê, Ê |
| alt + | 0244, 0212 = | ô, Ô |
| Cedilha | ||
| alt + | 0231, 0199 = | ç, Ç |
| Diérese | ||
| alt + | 0252 = | ü |
| Til | ||
| alt + | 0227, 0195 = | ã, Ã |
| alt + | 0245, 0213 = | õ, Õ |
| In Microsoft WORD: Hold down ctrl; press the symbol
key (don't forget to use the shift for some, like the til and the circunflexo), release and press the letter:
Disadvantage: you have to remember the numbers when using the Internet. |
If you will frequently be using Portuguese, you can either:
| Set your computer to US English International. This will
not effect most of your regular keyboard uses but a few less commonly keys are affected. Once you have used it a few times, it should not cause any concern and is much simpler to use since the same keys work in all documents. To set your computer:
Once set, you use the quotation key before typing any accented letter.
Nothing appears on the screen until the actual letter is typed. The
quotation mark does |
Disadvantage: you have to hit the space bar after using the specific mark ("). The apostrophe is also an accent marker, so this could become annoying.
| Set the keyboard to Portuguese language characters. Click here for instructions from Microsoft. |
Search Engines
| Read the general page on Web searching for a
detailed comparison of search results from English Language based search engines and their foreign language versions. Omitting an accent in Portuguese is considered a misspelling, since the accented letters are separate from their non-accented counterparts. Portuguese search engines, assuming the user will use the Portuguese alphabet, will not retrieve information from incorrectly spelled search terms. |
